By Stephen Downes
July 16, 2003
Welcome to (Company Name Here)
High™
In the wake of recent efforts in the
United States to make it harder to use schools to sell junk
food to children (at last) comes a more sweeping idea:
remove the commercialism from schools. Corporate
sponsorship is everywhere: sponsored field trips, sponsored
classroom materials, and more. The author writes, "if you
think selling candy bars and sodas at school is a problem,
you can agree that children identifying their schools with
a supermarket chain or a paint company isn't so healthy,
either. Perhaps then it will not only be tougher for
children to buy candy, but also easier for them to run
around gymnasiums that once again are, rather quaintly,
named after human beings." Yeah. By Alissa Quart, New York
Times, July 16, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Create and Sell Your Own books Using True
Print-on-Demand Technology
It hasn't quite
launched yet (take-off is July 28) but CafePress has
launched an initiative that should give publishers pause: a
means for writers to publish and sell their own books. What
distinguishes the CafePress approach from traditional
vanity presses is that the author does not have to invest a
dime. Just format and submit your content (instructions and
content converters are available) and wait for the orders.
CafePress sells for a set price depending on the number of
pages and the type of binding. What a great idea - maybe I
should create a book. What do you think? By Various
Authors, CafePress, July, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Adaptive Patterns in Authoring of Educational
Adaptive Hypermedia
The idea of adaptive
hypermedia is that online content would personalize its
display given information about the viewer. If (writes the
author) a student displays no motivation to learn the
chiaroscuro technique, then on detecting this, the system
would display a Rembrandt painting, "with the hope that
seeing such a great painting will motivate them." The
example is a little far-fetched. But the technique is
sound. The problem, notes the author, is that there is no
good tool for writing adaptive hypermedia, and hence the
launch of a European Community project, ADAPT, "whose main
goal is to extract adaptive patterns of educational
adaptive hypermedia, and to use these in authoring."
Interesting. Daunting. By Alexandra Cristea, International
Forum of Educational Technology & Society, July 16, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
RJC Video Throws Up IT Dilemma: Was Student
Using Technology In The Correct Way?
this is
interesting. "In the RJC incident, the student was reported
as having used a handphone camera to film a teacher
berating a classmate for a piece of work that had
apparently not been done satisfactorily. The teacher was
also captured on film when she — in a dramatic finale to
her outburst — tore up the student’s work." The questions
asked in the article get to the heart of the
student-teacher relationship. Students are expected to show
respect for teachers, but does this respect extend to the
tolerance of inappropriate behaviour? Also, as Steve Outing
comments in Poynter's E-Media Tidbits, "Rather than a
teacher's word going against a student's, the balance of
power shift thanks to this concrete evidence." By Kog Yue
Choong, Channel NewsAsia, July 16, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
AOL Cuts Remaining Mozilla
Hackers
It pains me to report this, but AOL is killing Netscape, ending the
browser war that began seven or eight years ago when
Microsoft launched Internet Explorer. On the heels of a settlement with Microsoft, AOL is, in a
mass layoff, terminating the Netscape project. It did,
however, provide two million dollars of seed money to the
open source Mozilla project, which will continue with the
Mozilla Firebird browser. Development
will be taken over by the Mozilla foundation. Former Netscape staff
are now posting to ex-mozilla.org. See Edu_RSS
for continuing coverage as new developments
unfold. By Unknown, MozillaZine, July 15, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Case for Patterns in Online
Learning
Interesting accout of the use of
patterns - "a generic approach to solving a particular
problem that can be tailored to specific cases" - in online
learning. Though some examples would be nice, the authors
nonetheless show how patterns solve some current issues in
online learning, describe and explore some pattern-writing
languages, and discuss the "mystical aspect of patterns":
"generativity, piecemeal growth, and the quality without a
name." By David Jones and Sharonn Stewart, ERIC, July, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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